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You probably heard by now that an animal shelter in California will not adopt an animal out to a person unless they support gun control. Here’s the official announcement from the head of it:
Shelter Hope Pet Shop has added a question to our adoption interview:
Where do you stand on gun control?
We believe that if we can make our voices heard on how we feel we can make an impact. We do not support those who believe that the 2nd amendment gives them the right to buy assault weapons. If your beliefs are not in line with ours, we will not adopt a pet to you. Our community of Thousand Oaks became part of all the other cities in America, now scarred with the reputation of a mass killing. The shooter that killed 12 innocent humans at The Borderline Bar, came to our shop for community service hours. We believe he had scouted many locations and we were one of them. We changed our policy about volunteering after that incident, but now we feel confident to go even further than that.
It takes at least 1 hour to interview someone that wants to adopt a dog at The Shelter Hope Pet Shop. You must be 25 and you must provide us with a current driver license. If you don’t own your home, we will need to speak with your landlord and we require you agree to let us come to your home for a physical inspection. If you lie about being a NRA supporter, make no mistake, we will sue you for fraud. If you believe that it is our responsibility to protect ourselves in public places and arm ourselves with a gun--do not come to us to adopt a dog. We have a choice of who we work with.
Shelter Hope chooses to work with only like-minded humans.
We live in the only country in the world that continues to support weapons and not communities. We will continue to support our community, but if you are pro guns and believe that no background check is necessary, then do not come to us to adopt. We will grill you before you even get an appointment and visit our rescue. If we ask you “do you care about children being gunned down in our schools?” If you hesitate, because your core belief is that you believe teachers need to carry firearms, then you will not get approved to adopt from us. If you foster for us and believe in guns, please bring our dogs and/or cats back, or we will arrange to have them picked up. Shelter Hope Pet Shop in no way will continue to operate if we are even remotely part of the problem. We support teachers, children, and businesses who provide services to the public, but we've had enough of all the senseless killing.
Remington just settled a law suit for 73 million dollars with Sandy Hook parents, who sued them. This lawsuit settlement didn’t stop the recent mass shootings but we have hope that if we stand up for change and activate our rights we will get there.
Pretty wacky, eh? Truth is, this statement and policy puts their 501c3 non-profit status at risk, as whether they like it or not, discriminating for something such as a civil right (which the 2A is) is a big IRS no no.
Further, crafting a policy like this is well
outside of their organization’s purpose and goals.
Even further, it appears (according to the CA SOS), that the charity/non-profit is not in good standing/having issues. Search and see for yourself.
Now, the shelter could raise funds for anti-gun groups without much trouble (which in the release there are links to Everytown and Sandy Hook Promise), but the minute they brought in political causes unrelated to their mission and purpose as a prerequisite for adoption, they opened the door for more trouble. Sometimes people need to keep their emotions in check, as virtue signaling in order to discriminate against people for no reason other than an unrelated position on a civil right is an easy way to get sued and cause harm to your organization that had a specific purpose, which in this case is animal welfare.